


[Suzuran] Fish Buntings

by Anonymous



Category: Hikaru no Go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 12:01:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6753070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is Children's Day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	[Suzuran] Fish Buntings

**Author's Note:**

> Liberties taken with my version of Hikaru's family.

Title: Fish Buntings  
Author: Suzuran

 

Masao Shindou opened his eyes and it was Children's Day. Ordinarily, he wouldn't have realised what day it was, but from the bed he could see through the open windows the fish-shaped buntings that their neighbours had put up in their garden. He turned his head to the side, contemplating whether to go back to sleep, but a glance at the bedside clock showed it was already past nine and the ingrained habit of a long working life was too strong: he took a deep breath and sat up, rubbing his eyes. Mitsuko was in the middle of a Golden Week getaway with her friends and he was all alone in the little house.

There was the sound of a door opening and closing just downstairs, and the sound of his son's voice reached his ears. "Dad? I'm here. Are you awake?"

That was Hikaru, of course. He called out a greeting. 

"You didn't tell me you were coming," he commented after he came downstairs to the dining area.

Hikaru, he was bemused to find, had actually made breakfast. He half-remembered Mitsuko giving Hikaru cooking lessons before Hikaru moved out, but he had assumed that his son actually survived on ready-made bentos and ramen.

"Mum said I should check on you while she's travelling," Hikaru said, placing bowls of miso soup and rice on the table, and setting out the chopsticks. "Itadakimasu!" he said, sliding down into a chair and beginning to eat.

It was his usual spot, Masao realised with a start, his memories of Hikaru as a little boy jarring with Hikaru's presence as an adult. He remembered that little boy who had insisted on sitting near the corner of the table so he could catch glimpses of the television while eating (until Mitsuko made him switch it off), but those memories seemed rather incidental. He couldn't remember what, if anything, they had spoken about during breakfast. 

He had not eaten many breakfasts with his child, it seemed.

"I thought today we could go to Grandpa's warehouse," Hikaru said as they were clearing the table later. 

"Oh, right." Unable to help himself, his movements slowed at the sink. "There isn't much left," he said, more to himself. "Just some old stuff. And his Go trophies." He looked up to see Hikaru's gaze on him, the eyes of a child no more, but the clear, sympathetic regard of an adult, and felt bereft, as though he had lost something.

***

Masao looked around idly as he and Hikaru walked side by side from the bus stop into the lane where his father had lived. This was the neighbourhood he had grown up in, though it was now an ageing neighbourhood. Unlike his own neighbourhood, there was no sign of koinobori anywhere. 

His father had passed away nearly two months ago, and while most of the house had been tidied up in preparation for it to be sold, there were still a few old things packed away in the warehouse, which had to be disposed of. Hikaru walked ahead of him as they approached the old house; something in his strong, quick steps made Masao think of the child Hikaru once was, a boy who had run everywhere. Who would have thought that he would end up playing Go?

They unlocked the door to the warehouse. His father had built it when his mother protested that his father’s clutter was going to fill up the house, and after his mother died, Masao had spent much of his afternoons there after school by himself. It was probably why he had seldom gone back there once he moved out.

He entered it gingerly, as though any rough movements would dislodge more memories. Dust motes drifted through the small windows, and Masao’s nose twitched, irrationally afraid that it was going to trigger his hay fever. He had barely taken more than three steps when Hikaru bounced back, having already gone through the warehouse. “Hey, Mum’s already packed up most of it,” Hikaru reported. “There’s just some old things. Grandpa’s Go stuff, mostly.”

“He had an old goban-“ Masao belatedly remembered.

“Yeah.” Hikaru nodded, more to himself than to him. “He gave it to me when he came home for the last time. I took it to my place after the funeral.”

His father had caught Masao using that old goban as a stepstool one evening after he came back from work, and had given Masao one of the biggest telling-offs of his life. It was a very valuable goban and apparently, haunted. But Hikaru had liked it a lot. It was good that he had something to remember his grandfather by, Masao thought.

“I have Grandpa’s Go books,” Hikaru reported after a pause. “And his trophies.”

“Do you want to take them?”

He watched as Hikaru’s diplomacy warred with his innate honesty, and lost. “Well, the books are kind of outdated, most of the strategies are based on the old komi. Can’t see how they can be of any use now. There’re a few commentaries of the castle games, I’ll take those.”

“Mm.” He didn’t pretend to understand what Hikaru was talking about when he discussed Go. In a very real sense, he had lost any ability to understand his son after Hikaru took up Go. “And the trophies?” They had filled a whole bookcase, and Masao knew Mitsuko couldn’t bear to throw them away.

Hikaru grimaced. “I’ll find a place somewhere in my apartment.”

They searched through the warehouse to be certain no other belongings were left behind, but there wasn’t much. Mitsuko had been her usual thorough self.

“I did find this,” Hikaru said to him, once they had packed a stack of old books and what seemed like dozens of trophies into two cardboard boxes. He held up a large envelope. 

Masao read his own name written on the front, in his father’s handwriting. “What’s in it?” he asked curious. He didn’t think he had anything left in his father’s house.

“Dunno.”

“Open it, then.”

With a dubious look at him, Hikaru opened the envelope and looked into it. His eyes widened, and he reached inside it. “A bunch of photos,” he said, handing them over to Masao.

Masao looked down into photographs of himself as a child, now sepia-toned and curling slightly at the edges. There was nothing special about those, probably snapshots taken when his mother was still alive (they took very few photos after she died) but Masao couldn’t help but stare. He looked a lot like Hikaru. Or rather, Hikaru had looked a lot like him as a child. 

“And also this,” Hikaru said, and pulled out a string of black, red, blue _koinobori_ , twisting on a dusty string.

/end


End file.
